WEST TEXAS: A SURPRISE DETOUR THROUGH ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO

December 27, 2019

One of our sons was home for Christmas, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to have an adventure together. We wanted to go somewhere we hadn't been, but we didn't have a lot of time and it was winter, so our options were limited.  We chose the exciting destination of El Paso. One of my friends has a sister who has lived in El Paso for years, and when she heard we had chosen it as our destination, she was flabbergasted. "Why would you go to EL PASO, of all places?" she said. "There is nothing to do there."

Well, not to give away too much, but (post-trip) we would disagree.

However, on the first day of our adventure, we thought the trip might turn out to be a colossal failure. We had booked an early flight on Southwest Airlines from Ontario to El Paso with a one-hour layover in Phoenix, arriving in El Paso at 9:55 AM, which would give us almost a full day. At 3:15 AM when we were in the car on our way to the Ontario Airport, I got a text letting us know that the flight from Phoenix to El Paso had been cancelled because of a lightning storm in El Paso. Southwest would put us on on an 11:00 PM flight, but that would mean sitting around all day in the Phoenix airport and arriving very late at night in El Paso. We had a non-refundable hotel room 80 miles from El Paso in Alpine, Texas, and we would not get there until the wee hours of the morning.  We had activities  planned that clearly were not going to happen, including dinner at a restaurant in El Paso that Bob had his heart set on.

While waiting for our first fight, however, my crazy husband hatched a plot. We would give up the second leg of the flight, rent a care in Phoenix, and drive 430 miles through Arizona and New Mexico, reaching El Paso in time for our dinner reservation and with plenty of time to make it to our hotel in Alpine. We were able to reserve a car in Phoenix that we would drive to the El Paso Airport, drop it off, pick up the other rental we had scheduled there and eat at the restaurant where we had reservations, and then drive three more hours to Alpine.  Fun, fun, fun!

One of the benefits is that we would be able to stop for a meal along the way that would far surpass the airport food we would have been stuck with in Phoenix. We had a delicious breakfast at Five Points Market and Restaurant in Tucson.

We were hungry, as you might deduce from the FIVE entrees we ordered for the three of us.  The hot chocolate was amazing, just like everything else.

ARIZONA: FUN ON VACATION

You might be wondering WHY we chose to go to Arizona last weekend. Well, there is the obvious answer in my previous blog, but there are several other reasons as well.

Of course, there was the fun of being together. That's a good enough reason all by itself, even if we did have to take our own picture because we were so far off the beaten track that no one was around to do it for us.

Then there were the really cool gift shops. Bob wanted to take this yard ornament home, but unfortunately it didn't fit in the trunk of our Honda Accord. Darn it!

Bob was really excited about the prospect of renting this darling little cottage for a month or two. It had all the amenities anyone could want . . .

. . . including a deluxe his and her bathroom just a mile down the trail . . .

. . . and lovely, lush landscaping, the kind you want to gather in bouquets to put on the kitchen table . . .

. . . and, best of all, so much to do and see nearby. Here is Bob taking a picture of some of the local fauna:

And here is one of the pictures he took:You noticed that frantically vibrating rattle, didn't you? And that nice forked tongue? Such an excellent specimen.

Besides the lovely cottage, we were quite taken by the pleasantness of our two-hour crawl across the Mexico/U.S. border. It gave us a lot of time to get to know the vendors along the wayside, and we were pretty tempted by the treasures being offered for sale:

Yes, it WAS hard to resist. Maybe next time.

Traveling with Bob is always an adventure.
All things considered, it was definitely a great trip.

ARIZONA: "I CAN SING A RAINBOW, SING A RAINBOW"

What is the first color you think of when you hear the name "Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument"? Dusty green? Brown? Gray? Bob and I just spent a weekend there and at nearby Puerto Penasco, Mexico. This is NOT what we saw:


I can tell you that dusty green, brown, and gray were at the bottom of the color list. In fact, it was so gorgeous that an old children's song from my long-ago past kept running through my head:

RED

AND YELLOW

AND PINK

AND GREEN,

PURPLE

AND ORANGE

AND BLUE

I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too!